


Mindless Tune

by Lacertae



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cultural Differences, Dave is an idiot, Karkat gets angry, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post Sburb/Sgrub, The Bucket Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 00:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacertae/pseuds/Lacertae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*Dave/Karkat*</p><p>Dave decides to be culturally inappropriate, and Karkat is not amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mindless Tune

**Author's Note:**

> I admit I like the idea of buckets used for porn purposes (there was this awesome Tavros/Dave where they go buy a pail and it's perfect), but also, trolls don't quite consider buckets to be sexy at all, since they use them under death threat... so this fic happened.

It all started while they were working together to build their new houses –or, as the trolls continued calling them, hives.

Finding a good place that would cater to everybody’s wishes had actually been hard; some had wanted to live near the water, while others had wanted the mountains, others wanted enough space so they wouldn’t see everybody all the time… finding the right place had taken time.

The new world was exciting and new, and so very interesting, but it was a group effort to stop and create a place where to come back to, a stable point to call ‘home’ that would be such for all of them.

So, when they finally found a perfect spot to settle into, they had hastily started working together to create a suitable group of buildings for everybody.

A few of the trolls had claimed the spots closest to the water, followed by Dirk, who’d lived in the middle of the sea for all his life and felt relaxed with falling asleep to the sound of the shore, while other trolls had tried to distance themselves from the centre of attention, choosing to settle within the forest, close enough to be able to be part of the community but distant enough to relax without being constantly surrounded by chatter.

When everything was settled over who wanted to go where, the actual works started up.

Trolls had no idea how to build things for themselves, as most of their hives had been constructed by Robotic drones from the Empress when they were mere grubs, but they knew the basics, and thankfully the alchemizer still worked in the new universe.

The humans had only worked with the aid of Sburb, but they also knew how to work around that by using strength and their powers, so all in all, things worked out just fine.

Until Dave got bored.

***

It started with him humming softly while working.

It was actually a change from his mumbling raps and quips about everything in sight, so most of others welcomed it as a relief.

The tune was also somewhat catchy, and he kept whistling and humming it over and over during the day.

Pushing a wheelbarrow down the road, waving at Tavros and John who were busy hoisting up metal bars, or handing off alchemized bottles of water to the group who had been assigned to digging for the day, the tune was always the same.

After a while, it seemed to catch on –Nepeta found herself humming it while hunting down food in the forest, and not long after she was whistling it softly to Meulin while the older teen had her hand against Nepeta’s throat, feeling the vibrations against her skin; Vriska whistled it while working, cursing at herself while Terezi chuckled at her before joining in.

Tavros and Rufioh both seemed to like the tune the most, bringing it with them as they worked, letting it expand through the whole growing village.

Of the other seven humans, though, only John and Jake seemed to have caught the tune-mania. John seemed to only sing it when he was around Dave, the two turning into a nice duet that went on and on, especially when they were with others, while Jake appreciated the tune for its music value, whistling it quite often.

Karkat at first was simply annoyed –then again, a lot of things about Dave annoyed him.

They were close friends, but that didn’t mean they had stopped bickering –it only meant their bickering was lacking its bite.

Still, while at first he’d just ignored Dave and his whistling, deciding it was just another Dave-thing and that it wouldn’t mean much, after a while the tune simply started bothering him.

Dave seemed to start whistling it only when around the trolls, and especially when he was around Karkat most of all, throwing him glances that Karkat couldn’t quite understand but that made him want to rip Dave’s shades off to look into his eyes for a better understanding.

Then, Rose’s expression whenever Dave hummed the song around her was telling enough; now that she’d stopped drinking, she was back to her less amusing but more reasonable self, trying to ignore her embarrassing lapse of intelligence, and it did look like she knew something about it and she didn’t quite like it.

So of course Karkat felt somewhat wary around the song, and refused to let himself get whisked into humming it –no matter how catchy it sounded, he wouldn’t give him.

After a while though, he started to think about it, and decided to confront Dave –it couldn’t be just a simple melody, and asking Rose would be fruitless, because she would just look at him and then point him towards Dave, so that was useless.

The other humans also didn’t seem to want to offer any explanation, not even Dirk, who would simply retreat into his building robots, tight-lipped and with a slightly uncomfortable look, so Karkat just let it go.

He had to confront the actual cause of annoyance and get some answer out from Dave.

***

The actual act of demanding information out of strider was easier said than done, though, and Karkat found it the hard way.

Dave had been put on wheelbarrow duty for the day, which meant he’d have to hoist grovel from one place and then drag it to the other end of the village, then go back and get the newly created bricks from the alchemizer and get them to whoever needed them.

The day was also somewhat hot, with the strange, weird and not-too-harmful sun of the new universe shining over them, and Dave had forgo his shirt altogether, turning his cape into a makeshift turban around his head.

There was something entirely unhealthy in the way Karkat was wasting his time stalking Dave from one side of the village to the other, following him around without actually getting close to talk to him; unfortunately, there was something almost hypnotic in the way Dave moved, and the troll’s eyes strayed down to his naked, toned back more than once, at one point even wishing for the heat to get unbearable enough that Dave would be forced to take off his pants too.

Of course when he realised what he’d just thought, Karkat backpedalled as far away from the human as he could, returning to his supervision duty for the day –there were a lot of idiots who had no decency and rested instead of working, and Karkat needed to check on them… and unfortunately for him, Dave was actually _doing_ his job.

Still, the third time this happened, Karkat had gathered enough annoyance at himself and at Dave to be able to stomp over to the human, sidestepping a mound of leftovers to get to him.

He didn’t even care that there were others around them, since he’d decided to approach Dave in the middle of what would become the main area of the village –he just needed to release some of his excessive anger.

Dave, still humming pleasantly, watched him approach with a relaxed stance, fingers flexing on the handles of the wheelbarrow, and Karkat had to fight all his instincts to keep staring at Dave’s face instead of his weird human pectorals.

That, thankfully, gave him enough anger to voice his question in the best way possible.

“What the fuck is that song that you keep using to burn our auricular sponge clots?” he gritted out, glaring at him with what he hoped was enough anger.

Dave’s face lit up like a candle, a smirk making his way on his face in a way that made Karkat feel like he’d just done something horribly wrong. The feeling intensified when he heard John snicker from somewhere above him –the fucking Heir of Breath was probably doing sentry duty– and Dave’s smirk seemed to get even brighter.

“Oh, Karkat,” he stated, and his voice was enough to make Karkat wince. “I was waiting for you to ask!”

There were times Karkat considered Dave one of his best friends. Times when he looked at him and could honestly say he cared for the stupid human a lot, because he’d stuck with him and offered him friendship in a moment when Karkat had thought he’d lost everybody else.

There were times Karkat wanted to hold onto Dave and offer him back just as much as Dave had offered him, and sometimes even _more_.

When he stopped and thought about it, and could even admit that having Dave around forever would be just about all he needed.

And then there were other times when Karkat felt he would _so_ love to slap the shit out of him. Times when he couldn’t take the constant teasing, the smirks, the annoying prodding from Dave, and wanted to just return them with similar intensity, if only he knew how to do it –how to make Dave tick.

Times when he wanted to throw Dave down onto the ground and just rack his nails down his back, until the human stopped being so insufferable, and started acting like a proper–

Yes, this was one of _those_ times.

Dave cleared his throat. Then, licking his lips, he cleared his throat again, humming for a second, and took a deep breath.

Somewhere above their heads, John stifled a giggle.

Karkat tensed up.

“There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,” he sang, still wearing a damnable smug smirk, “there’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, a hole”.

Karkat felt the tips of his ears turn dark grey instantly, the absurdity of the lyrics hitting him right in the chest.

Buckets, while not being perverted on any plan of existence, were still a horrible, obscene matter for trolls.

They were used for concupiscent relationships under threat of culling, forced to fill one or face messy death, and tied together so much of fear and troll culture that Karkat was left wordless, unable to voice his reproach for him as Dave continued singing on.

“… then mend it dear Henry, dear Henry, then mend it, dear Henry, mend it,” he sang in falsetto, mimicking the voice of ‘Liza’ before returning to his normal tone to continue the rest of the tune.

There were enough trolls around him that the show they offered was unique to each of them. Kanaya turned a weird shade of grey and green, her skin snapping from dull grey to blinding glowing in one second, making her blush even more visible. Rufioh’s wings flapped open by instinct, hitting Eridan in the face as the shorter troll wobbled back and hit his shoulder on a nearby pile of rubbish, that fell on top of him, covering him with soot and dirt.

Equius had been unfortunately present, and his loud groan, followed by a long cement block crumbling into pieces in his hands, was loud enough as a reaction to snap Karkat out of his shock.

“I can’t believe you–” he stopped, unable to find a good start for the flow of anger that was about to be unleashed on Dave’s shoulders.

Dave continued singing it, clearly unbothered by the growing discontent he’d caused in trolls, and Karkat felt his rage boil and simmer down until he could think of nothing else but that.

He grabbed Dave by his arm, and this seemed to be almost like a warning, because all the shaken, frozen trolls suddenly were moving away from them, sensing the incoming storm and not wanting to be part of it.

The remaining humans also seemed to sense something was brewing, because they vacated the premises as quickly as the trolls did, leaving a placidly ignorant Dave and a seething Karkat as the only ones on the scene.

“C’mon Karkat, don’t you want to be the second voice to this duet–”

“I can’t possibly believe you went so far up your waste chute that your head moved out from one end to get to the other with basically nothing to show for it except the utter bullshit you seem to spout out like it’s golden rain upon our heads, _Strider_ ,” Karkat’s voice was low. It was steady, and it was so deathly quiet that even Dave seemed to get that something was wrong. “This is taking it a bit too far, but of course such a shitsponge isn’t even aware that he’s unsettling people with his shitty little _bucket_ song–” he grinned, wide and empty and utterly terrifying, “oh yes, I can say _bucket_ , too, look at me being all vulgar and obscene, dear me”.

Dave blinked, swallowing his words in an attempt to keep his mouth from being dry.

“Wha–”

“Because of course such superior creatures like you, Dave, are supposed to twist and take something so private, so devastatingly bad as a bucket, and turn it into a silly song with an even sillier tune, all at our expenses, because it seems to be _fun_ ”.

“Karkat–”

“–and of course it is out of your mere desire to fuck with our minds, like you never did learn anything with your biased bulgenurturing sack of shit that is your think pan, so of course you would know shit about how it actually works…”

“Ok, I admit you sort of lost me there, man, but–” Dave licked his lips, looking somewhat lost, and the look pleased Karkat’s sadistic side very much. “What the fuck are you even talking about”.

He looked slightly defensive, probably because he’d realised that Karkat’s rage wasn’t like usual, and that was actually a good thing.

Karkat could do with teaching Dave some respect.

“Maybe it didn’t even register in that fucking human ‘brain’ of yours that buckets are not a sex toy, nor are they overly sexualised in our culture, because oh perish the thought of you actually understanding something about other cultures,” Karkat glared at him for that, “and as such your song was offensive as shit. You’re lucky Kankri wasn’t around –I would have found delight in leaving you with him”.

Mentioning Kankri was also the right way to go –Dave froze, a droplet of sweat rolling down his chin, and shivered slightly.

As Karkat disliked Kankri with a sheer intensity and Karkat and Dave had always cooperated in order to save each other whenever the older troll happened to target them, such words had the power to make Dave see the depths of Karkat’s rage.

“You were the one being incensed over buckets, so I just thought–” Dave shrugged, uneasy and embarrassed, red quickly spreading from his cheeks down his neck.

“No, you didn’t fucking thought. You just decided it would be funny to rile me up with stupid fucking buckets without even having the decency to gather more information!”

Dave hunched his shoulders even more. “Not like I had anyone to ask about _that_ stuff, you guys are pretty tight-lipped and one gets the wrong idea about it”.

Karkat snorted, but had to admit the point. Still, he felt enough incensed that even that didn’t deter him from properly showing Dave his anger.

“Still,” he grunted. “Buckets are a reproductive item. Whenever it’s time for us to procreate, we find a fucking Imperial Drone waiting for us on our _doorstep_ , and pray Lord that you have a fucking _quadrantmate_ to be concupiscent with, otherwise you’re just as well done for!”

Dave swallowed a bit, and Karkat felt the slightest bit better when he noticed him pale slightly.

“I… nobody told me that when I asked about your alien weirdass shit”.

Again with the defensive tone, and this time Karkat wanted to milk it for all it was…

“… you asked about what, exactly?”

Dave’s cheeks turned an even darker shade of red, much to Karkat’s confusion. Troll reproduction wasn’t a taboo subject, nor was it a secret –unlike the humans, who went strangely red and fidgety whenever the subject of human pailing came up– but of course there were details that the trolls, even now that they were safe and sound in the new universe, without Imperial Drones, didn’t really want to give out.

Karkat had no trouble talking about how things worked, because in a strictly scientific mind-set, it was just a way to teach about things.

Of course humans would be inferior in that way, too.

“I asked about your–” Dave swallowed again, and tilted his head to the side, avoiding to look at Karkat. “Y’know…” he made a motion with his hand that Karkat didn’t recognize. “Alien version of spam porpoise, tentacle monster–”

“… so just for posterity’s sake,” he grunted, now more amused than angry, “you fucking went around and asked about… troll genitalia? Is that what you’re saying?”

Dave groaned. “Fuck that shit, this wasn’t supposed to end like that, man. Not cool”.

“Oh, and pray tell me, Strider, how _was_ it supposed to go?” he mocked him, smirking and stepping forwards. “With your useless asking around that actually taught you nothing, and your usual annoying habit to always come to me to ask about every–fucking–thing you want to know, why didn’t you come to annoy me with your silly xenocuriosity?”

“Like it wouldn’t be weird to ask you about your weird alien genitalia,” Dave muttered under his breath, utterly humiliated.

“And that’s not as bad as you making me draw human penises on a book because…”

“Oh what the fuck, you still at me for that bro?” Dave groaned, finally staring back at Karkat’s face. “And it’s weird because I just–”

Karkat lifted one eyebrow, waiting patiently, enjoying the sight of a pathetic, embarrassed Dave.

“I sort of wanted to know what I was up against, ya know,” Dave finally commented, flustered beyond compare. “What I’d have to be all up in your business for, Karkat”.

It took Karkat a few seconds to decipher what Dave was saying, but when he did, he truly couldn’t believe it.

“Wait a goddamn minute there, Strider, because my auricular sponge clots surely must have misheard something in your pathetic mutterings, are you saying you’ve been singing obscene, culturally inappropriate songs, and asking around how it works, just because…” he hesitated, the enormity of what he wanted to say a bit overwhelming, “because you fucking wanted to make a pass at _my quadrants_?!”

“Now don’t make it sound so damn weird,” Dave fumbled a bit with himself, looking constricted and conflicted. “I ain’t up for that quadrant bullshit but like, I still want to be all and up in your business, Karkat, I’ve been thinking that for a while but we had to fight the bad guy first, and then we were safe so I thought- but then it was hard because fuck nobody wanted to talk to me about it and I had to make do and then Aranea just started talking and–”

“Shut that fucking trap for a moment, holy goddamn you are such a nookchafing _idiot_ ”.

Karkat massaged his forehead, hit by a complex wave of annoyance and weird fondness.

When it came to Dave, those two were tightly intertwined.

“I'm sorry,” Dave mumbled softly, almost too softly to be heard. “… did I just do a severe horrid mishap and burned away all my chances then?”

Karkat blinked up at Dave, surprised.

Dave looked almost resigned, and even with the shades on Karkat could read him quite well. He snorted into his hand, mumbling about idiots and stupid annoyances.

“No, Dave,” he grunted. “You did not burn your chances”.

Dave’s lips shifted up in a hesitant, hopeful smile. “Oh”.

“But if you so much mention a bucket again– and I mean it, ever again in a conversation, in a song, or whatever…” Karkat didn’t have to say anything anymore.

Dave hurriedly nodded. “So does that mean that you–”

“–that for some unknown reason I am not privy of, I actually have complex, concupiscent-related feelings for you too”.

The smile lost its hesitant side, and Dave’s flush receded slightly. “Oh,” he repeated, his tone different. “Good”.

Karkat snorted again. “Yes,” he parroted in a mocking tone. “ _Good_ ”.

When neither moved from their awkward stances, Karkat rolled his eyes, stomping over to Dave and grabbing his shoulders, startling the human out of his trance (unmindful of the shades Dave was still wearing), their faces mere inches from one another.

“This is the moment we kiss,” Karkat stated.

Cool forever lost, Dave did just that.


End file.
